News

Bringing Global Strike’s Operators Together

—Marc V. Schanz6/5/2014

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One lesson generated from Air Force Global Strike Command’s Force
Improvement Program is that officials could do more to broaden the ties between the command’s bomber and ICBM forces at the operations level, said Brig. Gen. Michael Fortney, AFGSC’s director of operations. Officials are beginning specific efforts to do just that, he told Air Force Magazine during a recent interview at AFGSC headquarters
at Barksdale AFB, La. “The bomber guys learned things about ICBMs from the
FIP,” said Fortney. While the ICBM community is adopting “flying side”
procedures from the bomber side in many areas, the “sharing went both ways …
and I think we can do better,” he said. This month, Fortney said, the
operations group commanders from the bombers of 8th Air Force and the ICBMs of
20th AF will gather at Barksdale for a two-day conference. They will look at their
respective operations, training, and evaluation challenges and other aspects of
the mission “we have to think about every day,” said Fortney. The command is
still “relatively new,” he pointed out. “Now, figuring out what we can learn
from each other is the next step,” he said.